Pressing Pause

I have made the (very difficult) decision to press pause on the podcast part way through S4.

I have kept going, rather relentlessly through the last 2 years, with not just one breast cancer diagnosis that came in July 2023, but then a second one in the autumn of 2024.

Work became a form of containment, a structure for me in the chaos of cancer. It gave shape to the days, and offered distraction from the pain and the fear, and it was a timeline I had some agency over when so much else was out of my control.

Continuing to function wasn’t a sign of strength, or the absence of anything. It was my nervous system doing what it was wired to do - choosing short-term survival over long-term integration.

I knew, even then, that the time would eventually come when I would have to stop and feel, and that functioning would have to give way to something, and maybe, deep down, I knew that being in service - creating, holding space, contributing something of meaning was one of the only places I still felt whole, even as everything else was falling apart.

I think there’s often an assumption that once cancer treatment stops and the cancer is in remission that we make a return back to who we were before the climb.

But that’s not been my experience - there is no return, more of a reassembling, a reintegrating and a reinhabiting of my body.

I can’t go back, and nor do I want to go back to the pre-cancer version of me, and now, as I’ve landed in the place beyond the climb and navigating a moderate/severe version of ME, my body is asking for something very different - my body simply will not allow me to 'just keep going' at the same pace before.

That means finding a kinder way to be - pacing myself with the limited energy I do have now looks very different and my body is demanding that I work in a very different way. 

So I am surrendering to what my body is asking for, and pressing pause on the podcast, acknowledging that it’s ok to stop mid season, and that I am allowed to create the space for what I need, in the way I need it.

Our post discovery support in the form of the circles and our mighty community will continue, and I hope the podcast continues to be a source of comfort, insight and belonging to those who need it.

Even today, newly discovered women and people across the world are discovering the podcast for the very first time and that won’t stop just because we’re pressing pause on recording any more episodes.

Thank you for all your support over the last 2.5 years.

Thank you to Caty for all the editing she has done behind the scenes.

Thank you to Pete for co-hosting some of the episodes with me in S4.

Thank you to our guests.

Thank you to the members and partners who support us.

And thank you to our listeners.

Our final episode of S4 (Ep 11) will drop on Friday 27th June 2025 and I don’t know if, or when, we will be back.

I ask myself if we don’t return have we done enough?

Have the 60+ episodes we’ve produced made the impact I hoped it would?

I feel confident that we have, and that the stories we’ve shared from all the courageous and brave guests who have shared their late discovery will continue to make an impact for many years to come.